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Parasites are always the weirdest.
Parasitic crustaceans: https://bogleech.com/bio-paracrust
Parasitic jellyfish: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/when-jell...
Another parasitic jellyfish (its larva develops inside-out, then turns itself outside-in when it bursts out of its host!): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypodium_hydriforme
Once at a fancy Japanese restaurant in NYC, I found a pea-sized crab inside a cooked mussel, and showed it to the staff. They didn't know what it was! I don't recall exactly, but either I was brave/stupid, or checked my Sony Xperia smartphone that it was a pea crab and was safe to eat. So I ate it and it tasted like crab sauce.
I can always rely on my Sony Xperia smartphone to get me through the day. Whether I'm at home, on the go... or even in the pool! With Sony's water resistance technology and a high resolution camera to capture those special moments, Xperia has my back.
Man: "I'm a marketing manager who lives in the suburbs and commutes to
work on the highway. I live alone, so of course I needed a car that
can seat 12 and is equipped to drive across arctic tundra... it just
makes me feel better!"
Woman: "The new Maibatsu Monstrosity... mine's bigger!"It was over a decade ago, so the phone elicited comments from strangers how small it was for a smartphone, and they would ask what brand.
Parasitic plants as well.
I don't have great links but look at mistletoe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistletoe and Indian pipe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotropa_uniflora for example.
Another common parasitic plant, dodder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuscuta
Also, a parasitic plant (a green alga) that infects animals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototheca
The creatures in the first link (be warned) look like they are from an alien horror movie. Nature and live how it forms and develops is just amazing.
> We've now looked at Crustaceans that attack the skin, eyes, lungs, anus, and uterus...where else would you absolutely never want a giant bug to grow? Your brain? Your genitalia? How about a two-for-one special?
And terrifying
I mean, I probably wouldn't particularly want a giant bug growing anywhere inside or inside-adjacent of me. Just saying.
Trust me, you have see nothing
From your first link, "Sarcotacid" would make for a great insult. It's a parasite that "prefers attaching to the rectum" (of fish), and females grow into "huge, warty pustules."
The pictures are horrific, lol. One of them looks like a bruised and infected scrotum. ...Actually they both kind of do in different ways.
Whoa, Argulus looks like Corroder from the PS1 game Clock Tower. Utterly terrifying.
>> Some flukes have evolved a behavior in which the larvae join into shapes that mimic small organisms. In doing so, they entice a fish to eat the larvae, so they can continue their life cycle inside the host.
>> These passengers, it seems, act as the infectious agents, waiting to infiltrate the gills or intestines of a fish that swallows them. The sailors, meanwhile, do the hard work of moving the blob through the water—but in [sic, doing so] sacrifice their own opportunities to reproduce.
That's fascinating! Dr. Ian Malcolm, your quote forever echoes.
Total war Warhammer vibes. What was the faction name that did it?
Genestealer?
It's like a floating Rat King:
>One of those intrigued was Igor Adameyko, a developmental neurobiologist at the Medical University of Vienna. (A fellow enthusiast of marine biology, he spotted the pictures on Instagram, where he has his own account dedicated to marine zooplankton.)
A definite scientist advanced in marine biology, just employed in a different laboratory profession so technically not an "actual marine biology professional".
>in his lab, Adameyko would like to learn more
>“These are our night science projects, because we want to have fun in the lab,” he says. “The idea is that there are no limits. And if you want to do something cool, you can.”
Careful, having an attitude like that can impart an unfair advantage so strong that it can draw some blowback from many so-called "serious professional" environments.
wha-a-a-a-at?
For the first time in a lot of time, they used the term mind-boggling accurately. I had never ever seen something like this before in a digenean.
What worries me is that all is based in a sample of DnA corrupted
Digeneans by definition aren't segmented animals. If each "petal" of the flower is an animal, then those are clearly segmented and this is very problematic
So either this is not a digenean, or we would need to reclassify an entire class of animals.
If this does not have complex chetae and maybe remains of a mandible then is not a polychaete (but we need to take in mind that both could had been dissolved by the preservative).
This animals seem to have a species of terminal sucker like digeneans have. But I would thing instead in another kind of animals with suckers that are segmented: Several marine leeches feeding on a mass of digenean spores (each one would be filled with digenean undigested DnA, so beware with spreading the analysis too thin!.
Other reasonable possibility IMAO would be a group of leeches producing or incubating a mass of eggs. Leech coccoons are complex structurally and round.
Something is very wrong here
The author mentioned it in the text, but Carl Zimmer‘s Parasitus Rex is is a good, horrifying read.
> This phenomenon, in which one member of a species forgoes its own chance to reproduce so that another can, is called kin selection.
So why don’t the one species die out? When do they reproduce?
One /member/ forgoes reproduction, not one /species/. It's akin to a sibling deciding that they won't have kids so they can help their sibling raise their own. The sacrificing family member passes their DNA on because they share DNA with kin.
It's not that different from a multicellular organism. The vast majority of cells in your body are dead-end lineages. They've specialized into sterile forms so that a few cells in your gonads actually do have a chance to reproduce. Evolutionarily it works because all the cells have the same (or very similar, in the case of kin selection) genes.
Kin selection takes place within a single species:
> The DNA confirmed that both the sailors and tiny passengers inside the hemisphere belong to the same species.
This instantly reminded me of Halo's Mgalekgolo a.k.a hunters, which are actually an unintelligent worm-like life form (Lekgolo) that aggregate as a collective (a colony) into an extremely resilient, strengthful, nimble, and smart humanoid body.
That's pretty cool. It's like a teeny, suicidal, Portuguese Man O' War.
The "Kin Selection" thing is fairly common in insects.
Most workers and soldiers in hives are sterile females (so when those white-faced hornets swarm your ass, it's "Hell hath no fury" in action).
This thing is terrifying.
It's like a Trojan Horse (the weapon of war) and. Trojan Horse (the malware) both in one
It looks positively cuddly compared to a Bobbit Worm (find a video on Youtube, if you dare).
Bobbit Worm is cute compared to a ribbon worm and its lightning tongue / proboscis (find a video if you don’t care about sleeping today).
I wouldn't want to find a ribbon worm in my salad, but I don't find them anything like as horror-inducing as a Bobbit worm.
I still can’t believe they actually called it that.
There is a bird called “Little bustard” [1] and more [2].
"Bustard" is apparently from Latin avis tarda, meaning "slow or deliberate bird".
I didn't realize it was actually named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_and_Lorena_Bobbitt . That only adds to the general level of horror, Thanks! =:0+
<crosses legs>
evolutionary precursors, literal wingmen, working selflessly in favor of better chances for reproductive success.
I think it looks fine? Kinda cute.